Eric Holder Montage

Back in November, the Second Amendment Foundation sent out this warning when Holder was up for nomination...

 

NEWS RELEASE Second Amendment Foundation 12500 NE Tenth Place • Bellevue, WA 98005 (425) 454-7012 • FAX (425) 451-3959 • www.saf.org HOLDER NOMINATION SIGNALS OBAMA'S TRUE ANTI-GUN RIGHTS AGENDA For Immediate Release: 11/19/2008 BELLEVUE, WA – The nomination of Eric Holder for the post of attorney general of the United States sends an "alarming signal" to gun owners about how the Barack Obama administration will view individual gun rights, as affirmed this year by the Supreme Court, the Second Amendment Foundation said today. "Eric Holder signed an amicus brief in the Heller case that supported the District of Columbia's handgun ban, and also argued that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right," noted SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. "He has supported national handgun licensing and mandatory trigger locks. As deputy attorney general under Janet Reno, he lobbied Congress to pass legislation that would have curtailed legitimate gun shows. "This is not the record of a man who will come to office as the nation's top law enforcement officer with the rights and concerns of gun owners in mind," he observed. Holder's nomination, like the appointment of anti-gun Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff, tells American gun owners that Obama's campaign claims supporting the Second Amendment were "empty rhetoric," Gottlieb stated. "America's 85 million gun owners have ample reason to be pessimistic about how their civil rights will fare under the Obama administration," Gottlieb said. "Mr. Obama will have a Congress with an anti-gun Democrat majority leadership to push his gun control agenda. Gun owners have not forgotten Mr. Obama's acknowledged opposition to concealed carry rights, nor his support for a ban on handgun ownership when he was running for the Illinois state senate. "Barack Obama vigorously portrayed himself on the campaign trail as a man who supports gun ownership," Gottlieb concluded, "but now that he has won the election, he is surrounding himself with people who are avowed gun prohibitionists. What better indication of what to expect from Barack Obama as president than the people he is selecting to lead his administration? This isn't a roster of devoted public servants. It's a rogue's gallery of extremists who have labored to erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights." The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nations oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 600,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control. SAF has previously funded successful firearms-related suits against the cities of Los Angeles; New Haven, CT; and San Francisco on behalf of American gun owners, a lawsuit against the cities suing gun makers and an amicus brief and fund for the Emerson case holding the Second Amendment as an individual right. -END- (Source)

Then there's this post from The Volokh Conspiracy:

 

[David Kopel, November 20, 2008 at 7:41pm] Eric Holder on firearms policy: Earlier this year, Eric Holder--along with Janet Reno and several other former officials from the Clinton Department of Justice--co-signed an amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller. The brief was filed in support of DC's ban on all handguns, and ban on the use of any firearm for self-defense in the home. The brief argued that the Second Amendment is a "collective" right, not an individual one, and asserted that belief in the collective right had been the consistent policy of the U.S. Department of Justice since the FDR administration. A brief filed by some other former DOJ officials (including several Attorneys General, and Stuart Gerson, who was Acting Attorney General until Janet Reno was confirmed)took issue with the Reno-Holder brief's characterization of DOJ's viewpoint. But at the least, the Reno-Holder brief accurately expressed the position of the Department of Justice when Janet Reno was Attorney General and Eric Holder was Deputy Attorney General. At the oral argument before the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Emerson, the Assistant U.S. Attorney told the panel that the Second Amendment was no barrier to gun confiscation, not even of the confiscation of guns from on-duty National Guardsmen. As Deputy Attorney General, Holder was a strong supporter of restrictive gun control. He advocated federal licensing of handgun owners, a three day waiting period on handgun sales, rationing handgun sales to no more than one per month, banning possession of handguns and so-called "assault weapons" (cosmetically incorrect guns) by anyone under age of 21, a gun show restriction bill that would have given the federal government the power to shut down all gun shows, national gun registration, and mandatory prison sentences for trivial offenses (e.g., giving your son an heirloom handgun for Christmas, if he were two weeks shy of his 21st birthday). He also promoted the factoid that "Every day that goes by, about 12, 13 more children in this country die from gun violence"--a statistic is true only if one counts 18-year-old gangsters who shoot each other as "children."(Sources: Holder testimony before House Judiciary Committee, Subcommitee on Crime, May 27,1999; Holder Weekly Briefing, May 20, 2000. One of the bills that Holder endorsed is detailed in my 1999 Issue Paper "Unfair and Unconstitutional.") After 9/11, he penned a Washington Post op-ed, "Keeping Guns Away From Terrorists" arguing that a new law should give "the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms a record of every firearm sale." He also stated that prospective gun buyers should be checked against the secret "watch lists" compiled by various government entities. (In an Issue Paper on the watch list proposal, I quote a FBI spokesman stating that there is no cause to deny gun ownership to someone simply because she is on the FBI list.) After the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the D.C. handgun ban and self-defense ban were unconstitutional in 2007, Holder complained that the decision "opens the door to more people having more access to guns and putting guns on the streets." Holder played a key role in the gunpoint, night-time kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez. The pretext for the paramilitary invasion of the six-year-old's home was that someone in his family might have been licensed to carry a handgun under Florida law. Although a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo showed a federal agent dressed like a soldier and pointing a machine gun at the man who was holding the terrified child, Holder claimed that Gonzalez "was not taken at the point of a gun" and that the federal agents whom Holder had sent to capture Gonzalez had acted "very sensitively." If Mr. Holder believes that breaking down a door with a battering ram, pointing guns at children (not just Elian), and yelling "Get down, get down, we'll shoot" is example of acting "very sensitively," his judgment about the responsible use of firearms is not as acute as would be desirable for a cabinet officer who would be in charge of thousands and thousands of armed federal agents, many of them paramilitary agents with machine guns.

And finally, Holder's view (pdf) of what the Second Amendment really means:

 

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE Amici curiae are former officials of the United States Department of Justice.1 In their official capacities, amici curiae were responsible for enforcing the laws of the United States, including federal laws that regulate the possession, use, ownership, and sale of firearms. They submit this brief to express their view that federal, state, and local gun control legislation is a vitally important law enforcement tool used to combat violent crime and protect public safety. Amici disagree with the current position of the United States Department of Justice that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for purposes unrelated to a State's operation of a well-regulated militia. That position, which was adopted in the fall of 2001, reversed the Department's longstanding position that the Second Amendment is not implicated by firearms regulations that are designed to protect public safety and do not interfere with participation in a well-regulated militia. The Department's current position runs against the great weight of federal appellate authority, which has rejected the view that the Second Amendment protects a right to keep and bear arms for private purposes. Amici believe that the Department's original position reflects the correct interpretation of the Second Amendment and that the current position, if adopted by this Court, will place vitally important gun-control legislation at risk of invalidation, to the detriment of effective law enforcement and public safety.

How Eric Holder ever became AG is beyond me. I must conclude that those that gave him their stamp of approval were either idiots or just didn't give a shit... or both. His view of the Second Amendment--as well as Janet Reno's as her name is attached to the amicus brief as well--raises quite a few questions as to the motivation behind DOJ's pursuing both David Koresh at Waco, Texas and Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge in Idaho. If they were acting under the belief that neither party had the Right under the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms for private purposes, it would explain their heavy-handed approach to disarm them.

No Taxation Without Representation, Redux

It seems the county governments in our fine state don't want to do what every taxpayer in their position is being forced to do, tighten their belts and cut spending to bring their budgets under control. No, they'd rather force the people into paying higher taxes by going to the state legislature asking their permission to bypass the voter to raise taxes.

 

From this AP article:

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - County officials want the Legislature to let them raise some taxes without a public vote.

The House Finance Committee held a public hearing on two bills Tuesday, one that would only apply to King County, and the other that would apply to the state's 38 other counties.

The News Tribune of Tacoma reports that the bills would let local county council members raise sales taxes by themselves and give counties the same ability to impose a 6 percent tax on water, sewer and electrical utilities that cities now have.

Currently, counties are allowed to raise the local sales tax by 0.3 percent with a public vote as long as the money is used to pay for public safety programs. Forty percent of that new money goes to cities.

In 2003, Pierce County tried to raise the sales tax to hire 100 law enforcement officers in the county and its cities, but voters overwhelmingly rejected it.

Voters in Thurston County have twice rejected similar tax proposals.

State Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama and a member of the committee, noted that these bills would let council members impose taxes that voters already have rejected.

"You're now asking us to change the rules?" Orcutt asked.

Scott Merriman, deputy director of the Association of Counties, and Jim Justin, his counterpart with the cities' association, said they just want the option of having either a public vote or a council vote.

They told the committee that local elected officials would discuss taxing options with their constituents before taking any action, but they need options to replace some of the money that cities and counties have lost because of lower tax collections in the economic downturn.

"Are you considering at all that revenues are down because consumer revenues are down and consumers cannot afford to take any more money out of their pockets?" Orcutt asked. "How can you sit here and say you want to change the rules without letting them have a vote on it?"

Rep. Ross Hunter, D-Medina, finance committee chairman and prime sponsor of the measure for King County, said he wants to help keep the county from making drastic cuts to its human services programs.

That bill also contains a provision to help cities collect more money if they annex a portion of unincorporated King County that has a very small tax base and whose residents don't pay enough taxes to cover all the city services they get.

So, in many cases, the voters have already told county councils that there's just no more money to be had. Not content with hearing no, the councils have decided to do what governments are really good at: forcing the people to pay up regardless of their wishes. But this has all been done before:

In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which placed a tax on newspapers, almanacs, cards, legal documents, and other paper documents. Although this was not the first tax that Parliament had put on the American colonists, it was the first tax to affect everyone, not just merchants or other special groups of people. As a result, many people in the colonies were angry. They believed that it was unfair to have Parliament make the Americans pay taxes when they had no say in the decision. Most colonial governments were headed by governors appointed by Britain, rather than people elected by Americans. Many felt that they should not be taxed unless they had a representative in Parliament.

Most members of Parliament were convinced that Britain ought to be able to collect taxes from the colonists. Thus, they did not bother with the colonists complaints. This made the American protesters even angrier. Groups like the Sons of Liberty started to organize demonstrations against unfair British policies. People like Patrick Henry in Virginia and Samuel Adams in Massachusetts spoke out against British taxes. The Americans who didn't like Britain's taxes started using this slogan: "no taxation without representation."

In 1765, delegates from nine out of the thirteen colonies met in New York City at the Stamp Act Congress. On October 19, 1765, they signed a resolution which stated that it was their right to have "no taxes imposed on them ... [except] with their own consent, given personally or by their representatives." In reply to all the colonial demonstrations, the British Parliament got rid of the Stamp Act, but passed a law called the Declaratory Act, which stated that Parliament had "full power and authority to make laws and statutes ... in all cases whatsoever," including taxation. The argument over this issue was one of the major causes of the Revolutionary War. (Source)

It's like a game of chess where the state is surrounding us with their pieces. We're at the point where we realize that unless we do something drastic, our king piece will be lost and the game will be over forever. They are forcing us to do that which all free men will eventually have to do to remain free. We will be forced to fight to defend ourselves, our property, and our way of life. We already know their next move. History tells us what it is. They will declare that they have "full power and authority to make laws and statutes ... in all cases whatsoever, including taxation." And we know our next move... Revolution.

Choosing Their Weapons

Quote of the Day

"I believe in education of the mind over legislation by force."

~Pointman (my buddy from PNWRiders.com)

Can't Remember Sh... No Wait!

CRS stands for Congressional Research Service. What is CRS and why am I bringing it up? Here's why:

Wikileaks releases thousands of CRS reports

Wikileaks releases a massive cache of unpublished reports from Congress' $100 million think tank, covering timely topics ranging from intelligence reform to the DTV transition.

By Julian Sanchez | Last updated February 9, 2009 4:28

 

You'd be hard-pressed to tell sometimes, but the United States Congress actually maintains its own in-house think tank, staffed by a seasoned team of lawyers, economists, and policy experts: the Congressional Research Service. Founded in 1914 as the Legislative Reference Service, CRS now commands an annual budget in excess of $100 million. But while its funding is public, the reports CRS produces—covering 150 distinct issue areas, according to its 2007 annual report—aren't. While members of Congress frequently choose to make reports they've commissioned public, CRS itself has resisted multiple efforts to amend the law to make its research public as a matter of course.

 

As that 2007 report puts it, CRS's "policy of confidentiality" is meant to reassure legislators that "that they can come to CRS to explore issues, and they can do so without question, challenge, or disclosure." The idea is to let members inquire into controversial topics without exposing themselves to controversy—but the result is also that legislators get to pick and choose which findings they want to share with the rest of the world.

 

The Center for Democracy and Technology has been doing its best to pierce that veil of confidentiality with OpenCRS, a repository of all the reports that have been released or leaked. This weekend, they got a treasure trove of fresh documents thanks to Wikileaks, which has passed along 6,780 CRS reports—the vast majority of which weren't previously available. Almost 2,300 of them were produced or updated in the past year, and many address such timely issues as the DTV transition, the powers of the Director of National Intelligence, economic stimulus, the Fairness Doctrine, consumer privacy legislation, and the future of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

 

Congress, of course, could choose to make all this redundant by simply instructing CRS to publicly post its own reports. In the meantime, you can BitTorrent the whole cache from, believe it or not, The Pirate Bay. (Source)

That's just awesome! So much so that it inspired the following:

 

Newsweek: We Are All Socialists Now

This Newsweek article states:

The answer [for fixing our faltering economy] may indeed be more government. In the short run, since neither consumers nor business is likely to do it, the government will have to stimulate the economy. And in the long run, an aging population and global warming and higher energy costs will demand more government taxing and spending. The catch is that more government intrusion in the economy will almost surely limit growth (as it has in Europe, where a big welfare state has caused chronic high unemployment). Growth has always been America's birthright and saving grace. 

This, the authors claim, makes us more socialistic. I say they are wrong. If anything, the U.S. is well on its way to becoming a fascist state. Fascism is defined as,

A governmental system with strong centralized power, permitting no opposition or criticism, controlling all affairs of the nation (industrial, commercial, etc.)
(American College Dictionary, New York: Random House, 1957). 

Whereas socialism is defined as,

"a theory or system of social organization which advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means or production, capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole" (American College Dictionary). 

If anything, what with the eminent re-emergence of the Fairness Doctrine, the former definition is by far more correct. Bush, Jr. started the ball rolling down this path. Obama and the Congress are more than happy to pick it up and run with it.

Other People's Money (Revisited)

Other People's Money or OPM (pronounced "opium".)

OPM: it's a drug that most politicians seem to get hooked on the moment they get voted into office.

Is you politician an OPM addict?

There are many signs that a politician may have an OPM addiction. The OPM addiction signs listed below are cues to look for when evaluating this matter. Be aware that possessing several of these signs does not always imply that there is an OPM addiction present, but if one is suspected be supportive of the politician in their road to OPM addiction recovery.

OPM addiction signs may include:

• Increase in appetite; changes in eating habits, unexplained expenditures.
• Traces of OPM in bills, briefs, or promises.
• Extreme hyperactivity; excessive talkativeness.
• Paper cuts on fingers.
• Change in overall attitude / personality with no other identifiable cause.
• Changes in friends: new hang-outs, avoidance of old crowds, new friends are OPM users.
• Change in activities; loss of interest in things that were important before.
• Changes in habits at home; loss of interest in family and family activities.
• Difficulty in telling the truth, even when the truth would serve them best.
• Lack of moral integrity, self-esteem, discipline. Displays a "What's in it for me?" attitude.
• Defensiveness, temper tantrums, resentful behavior (everything is a threat to his re-election).
• Unexplained moodiness, irritability, or nervousness when questioned on spending.
• Violent temper or bizarre behavior when presented with budget cuts.
• Paranoia -- suspiciousness.
• Excessive need for privacy; keeps door locked or closed, won't let people in.
• Secretive or suspicious behavior.
• Car accidents, fender benders, household accidents. Quits paying taxes.
• Chronic dishonesty; trouble with police; lies constantly. Makes outlandish promises.
• Unexplained need for money; can't explain where money goes; stealing.
• Unusual effort to cover his own ass at the expense of others.

If you feel that your politician is an OPM addict, the only cure is to either vote them out of office or--in the most extreme cases--outright revolution.